Little Red Killers
The Khmer Rouge Army
During the summer dry season of 1973 the Khmer Rouge launched a frontal assault on Phnom Pehn in hopes of winning the war and establishing a communist utopia. Throughout June and July, more than 30,000 communist troops attempted to bull-rush their way through government defenses. The troops manning those defenses were well armed and hardened by three years of war. Pinned in place by the Armee Nationale Khmer (ANK), Khmer Rouge forces suffered frightful losses at the hands of the United States Air Force, who set alight the skies around the capitol with round the clock air strikes. By July the Khmer Rouge abandoned the attack.
The dry season offensive of 1973 was a disaster for the Khmer Rouge. Thousands of their fighters lay dead in the fields around Phnom Pehn while thousands more had been incinerated by American napalm and B-52 arc-light strikes. American airpower only partially explains the Khmer Rouge defeat. Much of the credit lies with ANK. Khmer Rouge tactics counted on human wave attacks powered by Marxist ideology to overcome ANK firepower. While ANK gave ground, it did not break. In essence, the Khmer Rouge pushed their own troops into ANK’s waiting guns.
Khmer Rouge main force units were so devastated by the dry season offensive that they were forced to drastically curtail operations. Noted ANK General Sak Sutsakahn 'the capital area entered a period of lessened activity which lasted into December.' The dry season offensive of 1973 was a psychical and moral failure. The war in Cambodia would go on for another two years.
The War through 1973
From the beginning of the conflict, Cambodia had been an integral part of the Vietnam War. In fact, the North Vietnamese prosecuted the war through Cambodia. The Committee on South Vietnam, the office responsible for military operations there, was headquartered in Cambodia. The Ho Chi Minh trail ran through Cambodia. Six NVA divisions were stationed there as well. These enclaves had of course been bombed by the United States. Though his nation had been used as communist base for attacks against South Vietnam, Prince Sihanouk had kept his nation officially neutral. Cambodia's neutrality came to an end on 18 March, 1970 when the prince was overthrown by a cabal of military officers led by General Lon Nol. The general took power and issued an ultimatum for North Vietnamese forces to leave the newly christened Khmer Republic. The North Vietnamese responded by launching a six division offensive. The NVA easily routed the 12 brigades of the Cambodian army and pushed all the way to the east bank of the Mekong River. Roughly half of the Khmer Republic was now under communist control.
In response to the North Vietnamese attack, and in an attempt to improve America's negotiation stance at the Paris peace talks, President Nixon ordered the combined American/South Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia. Launched in late April, the invasion did significant damage to NVA units and infrastructure on the border and marked the beginning of intimate American involvement in Cambodia. This involvement included a massive aerial campaign, military advisors on the ground and hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid. For the next two years ANK fought the NVA. A pair of offensives, Chenla I and II failed to liberate territory lost to the NVA, which held on to the eastern part of the country but did not overthrow the government. With its sanctuaries secure there was o reason for the NVA to conquer the rest of the Khmer Republic. In the meantime the Khmer Rouge waited in the liberated east. Simultaneously the Nixon Administration was shrinking the U.S. military footprint in Southeast Asia while, by act of Congress, after August of 1973 the United States was forbidden from launching airstrikes within the Khmer Republic.
Turning Rouge
The Khmer Rouge had spent three years in eastern Cambodia patiently gathering its strength. The first task was to establish safe havens. In this effort, building good will with the local populace was essential. During the early years of the war, Cambodian peasants were treated with respect by Khmer Rouge troops who lived and worked in their villages. This of course contrasts starkly with Khmer Rouge conduct after they took power. With infrastructure established, the Khmer Rouge recruited throughout the countryside. Again, Khmer Rouge methods here were surprisingly lenient. At this stage in the war recruits who grew tired of fighting or disliked the war simply walked away from their units without fear of punishment.
The Khmer Rouge's hands-off approach built good will, but was also necessary. The war pitted the urban, westernized cities against the rural interior. Most rural Cambodians deeply distrusted urbanites and had no use for them. Their lives were pre-industrial, an existence where the sun was the calendar and clock, where one worked until one had enough to survive, and no more. The people supported by and recruited into the Khmer Rouge had barely been touched by the modern world, so much so that when they took Phnom Pehn, many Khmer Rouge soldiers drank from toilets, thinking these were urban versions of wells. During the early stage of the war, Marxist discipline was simply not practical. Pol Pot's lenient policies ended in the spring of 1973 as the Khmer Rouge took to the field. As the offensive began in earnest it was necessary to solidify control over interior. Forced collectivization began and strict military discipline was enforced.
In many ways Pol Pot's doctrine of Marxist austerity fit in well with the Cambodian peasant's naturally austere lifestyle. Like Pol Pot they viewed urban living as inherently decadent and corrupt and gleefully set about destroying it. Young Khmer Rouge soldiers spent their first few days in Phnom Pehn manually taking apart and smashing everything they saw as urban and modern; cars, appliances, windows; they burned money. The Khmer Rouge was a peasant army in the truest sense.
Orgy of Destruction
After the failure of the dry season offensive, the Khmer Rouge shifted the emphasis of attack north, to the provincial capital of Kompng Cham, northeast of Phnom Pehn. Given the importance of US airpower to stopping the summer offensive, the Khmer Rouge should have seen success here. However, once again ANK fought well. August saw constant fighting around the outskirts of Kompong Cham with the Khmer Rouge gradually gaining ground. However, when the Khmer Rouge launched a concerted attack on Kompong Cham on 1 September, ANK inflicted heavy casualties. While some Khmer Rouge units were able to fight their way inside the city, the main advance was halted. ANK reinforcements arrived via river convoy and landed behind Khmer Rouge forces. Kompong Cham was temporarily saved. Even without American air power, ANK was capable of holding on and holding off the Khmer Rouge.
The Khmer Rouge's inability to drive home an attack and finish off its target led to a prolonged war of attrition; a seesaw war that saw Khmer Rouge offensives blunted by ANK resistance, followed by ANK counterattacks which reversed the Khmer Rouge's gains. While American airpower was gone, American equipment still flowed to ANK. The most important of these was the M-113 armored personnel carrier. By 1974, 185 were in ANK's inventory and organized into special squadrons. ANK generals massed these squadrons and used them to spearheaded counterattacks. The Khmer Rouge was fanatical and unspeakably violent but it was a light infantry force. That fanaticism and violence could carry the Khmer Rouge in attack but couldn’t help it hold ground against massed ANK M-113s. Units of the Khmer Rouge simply lacked the firepower to stop M-113 squadrons. Massed M-113s undoubtedly had a significant psychological effect on the average rural Khmer Rouge soldier.
When the Khmer Rouge was able to seize a city or town they unleashed massive, systematic destruction upon its inhabitants, whom they viewed as untrustworthy counterrevolutionaries. The Khmer Rouge applied a doctrine of purification to Cambodia, where everyone who was part of or corrupted by the former regime must be reeducated at best and exterminated at worst. Khmer Rouge standing orders emphasized the need for torture and execution of ANK officers, though simple re-education might be possible for the rank and file. For example, in March of 1974, the Khmer Rouge attacked the city of Oudong and took it after a three-week siege. They massacred the surviving ANK defenders and families and then turned the population of more than 20,000 out into the countryside. The sack of Oudong was a precursor to the mass evacuation of Phnom Pehn in 1975. Despite housing millions of people, several hundred thousand of whom were refugees from the fighting, the Khmer Rouge routinely bombarded Phnom Pehn, again seeing it as a nest of fascists and counterrevolutionaries.
Riverine Campaign
Whatever its flaws, so long as ANK was supplied with American equipment it would be able to hold off the Khmer Rouge. Those supplies came through two conduits, Pochentong Airport just west of Phnom Pehn, and the Mekong and Bassac Rivers. Before the failed Phnom Pehn offensive of 1973, the Khmer Rouge had had much success along Route-1 and the Mekong River, overrunning several ANK positions on both banks near the South Vietnamese border. These victories temporarily closed river traffic. By the end of April, 1973 ANK only controlled 30 percent of the Mekong river bank. Of course, ANK counterattacks ousted the Khmer Rouge from these hard won positions. B-52 strikes were especially effective as the Khmer Rouge was tied down to a position it had to defend.
Khmer Rouge attacks on river convoys featured small arms fire, RPGs, and manually detonated mines. In the early stages of the Khmer Rouge's war their river attacks could not stop government convoys, though they could do damage. During April of 1973, the Khmer Rouge sunk three ships and one munitions barge. Though they only manage one sinking in May, the Khmer Rouge maintained a steady stream of attacks, scoring 56 hits on various convoys until the end of the month. The Khmer Rouge could harass the river convoys, but in 1973, they could not stop them.
In January of 1974 the Khmer Rouge attacked Phnom Pehn yet again. Their efforts were focused against ANK's northwest and southwestern sectors. Once more, the Khmer Rouge gained ground but lost it to concerted ANK counterattacks. By mid-March, the Khmer Rouge changed tactics and attacked smaller cities, such as Kompat and Oudong. The Khmer Rouge also renewed its efforts along the Mekong and Bassac Rivers, once again slowly traffic but not halting it.
The Fall of Phnom Pehn
Finally, in January of 1975, at Pol Pot's direction, the Khmer Rouge launched massive offensive aimed at winning the war. However, this time the Khmer Rouge first concentrated on closing the Mekong/Bassac River supply line. The Khmer Rouge also attacked Phnom Pehn's southwestern sector (which included the Bassac River and Pochentong airport). The attack made significant progress, by the end of the month the airport was within range of Khmer Rouge rockets. The Khmer Rouge also hit ANK river outposts further south. These attacks fell on the ANK 1st Division and systematically rolled up their positions along the river. About thirty miles downriver form the capital, the town of Neak Long became the focal point of the Mekong campaign. The ANK brigade there fought desperately through March, but was finally overwhelmed in April. Wrote General Sak Sutsakhan, 'This development opened the gates of the capital to the south.' From the Khmer Rouge push north along the river and rolled up ANK 1st Division's remaining outposts 'all friendly positions on Toute 1 above Neak Luong... and held fell one after the other, in the course of heavy combat.'
With the fall of Neak Luong the Khmer Republic's fate was sealed. Cut off from outside help, save Pochentong Airport which was under constant harassment by the spring, ANK slowly retreated on the capital. Fighting raged in the north, south and west as three ANK divisions held on valiantly. During this final phase of the war, the Khmer Rouge renewed its frontal, massed assaults. Without American airpower doing do was far less deadly than in 1973. Also, Pol Pot was in a race against the North Vietnamese, who themselves were bearing down on Saigon. If he could win his war first, it would mark his independence from Hanoi. Fifteen April was a great day for the Khmer Rouge. To the north of Phnom Pehn, the Khmer Rouge cracked ANK defenses based on a protective dike and poured south. At the same time they finally overran Pochentong Airport, severing the city's last line to the outside world. The next day the caretaker government surrendered, Lon Nol had fled the country on 13 April. The Khmer Rouge triumphantly entered from all directions the same day.
War with Vietnam
While the Khmer Rouge systematically dismantled the renamed Democratic Republic of Kampuchea, it also made enemies of the Vietnamese. Much tension had existed between the Khmer Rouge and Vietnamese communists since 1970. Pol Pot was distrustful of foreigners, more so the Vietnamese who were an ancient antagonist of Cambodia. He put much stock in taking Phnom Pehn before the North Vietnamese took Saigon, a show of pride to be sure, but also one of independence of the Vietnamese, who after all had done much to help the Khmer Rouge. Pol Pot also pursued ancient Cambodian border claims, both on land at sea.
Throughout 1977 and 1978 Cambodian and Vietnamese troops engaged in border fighting. Countless skirmishes were fought, these sometimes led to outright violations of territory. In one incident Khmer Rouge troops crossed the border and advanced several miles into Vietnam, leaving behind them a trial of death and destruction. In mid December of 1977 the Vietnamese launched a large-scale incursion into Cambodia. 50,000 men on a 100 mile front advanced twelve miles into Cambodia, easily sweeping aside Khmer Rouge troops before withdrawing in January of 1978. Skirmishing continued throughout 1978. In November, the Vietnamese launched another large scale-incursion, this one into the northeastern Kratie province. In the pitched battle that followed, the NVA obliterated the Khmer Rouges division defending Kratie. This was a prelude to an outright invasion with the goal of toppling the Khmer Rouge. To that end, the Vietnamese established a puppet rebel organization, the Kampuchean National United Front for National Salvation.
On Christmas Day the Vietnamese once again invaded Cambodia. This was no border action or punitive expedition but a massive effort to overthrow the Khmer Rouge. 60,000 men streamed across the Vietnamese and Laotian borders. Pol Pot once more trusted ideological purity to overcome the enemy. He ordered most Khmer Rouge units, about 30,000 men, deployed forward. While these did offer stout resistance for the first few days especially in the Fishhook, a spit of land stabbing east into Vietnam, at Neak Long and at Toni, in the south. In the long run they were no matched for the NVA which employed armor, artillery, and airpower against Khmer Rouge zeal. Besides the Khmer Rouge was defending a nation hallowed out by five years of war and four years of brutal Khmer Rouge rule, at least two million people, a third of the population, were already dead. The Khmer Rouge received little help from their own people, most of whom welcomed the Vietnamese as liberators. By 4 January the NVA occupied all of Kampuchea east of the Mekong. By 9 January the Vietnamese had taken Phnom Pehn. The Khmer Rouge was out of power once more.
Angkar
Under Pol Pot's leadership the Khmer Rouge existed in a state of permanent extreme secrecy and paranoia. Most of the leaders were known only by a numerical designation. For instance, Pol Pot was 'Brother Number One' and his name never mentioned in public. The Communist Party of Kampuchea didn't officially exist until 1977. Instead of establishing a Soviet style cult of personality around a single leader, the Khmer Rouge built up a single organization known only as Angkar. Angkar was at once everywhere and nowhere, an all-encompassing entity that controlled every aspect of like within Kampuchea but was completely inaccessible. Angkar preached not only against the corrupting influence of capitalism, but of foreigners. The country was almost totally closed off from the rest of the world until the regime was ousted by the Vietnamese.